


The Love Song of Anthony Edward Stark, Bridezilla

by nice_girls_play



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Mansion, Domestic Avengers, M/M, Steve Rogers is a patient man, Tony Stark likes to micromanage, Wedding Planning, Weddings, Wolverine might be pregnant, miniscule Iron Man 3 spoilers, non-IM3 compliant in places, slightly cracky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve asks Tony to marry him. Tony plans the wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfsheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsheart/gifts).



> Companion piece to Wolfsheart's [Peanut Butter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/409873) and [Never Piss Off a Telepath; Or How Logan Opened His Mouth and Said a Stupid Thing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/316012). I love you, Tracy.

Bruce is the first one to know. 

Since moving into the massive Stark mansion on Fifth Avenue, Tony has bored with occupying the office couch to tell Bruce his life story every few days and moved on to testing what he calls his "soft limits" and "hard limits." Seeing what stress-related reactions will get him close to a green place and what actions merely irritate him. It’s a friendly reminder of how much control he has from day to day, moment to moment and, most of the time, he can take it in the spirit it was intended. 

Drinking all of Bruce's Moroccan mint tea, for instance, will not make him turn into a huge, pants-tearing green rage monster, but it will earn him a disappointed look. Invading his lab space at inopportune moments -- if Tony doesn't actually have anything new to bring to the table -- will earn him an annoyed remark and a semi-firm dismissal. Bruce is certain there is a complete lab book uploaded to JARVIS's data banks and that the electronic version of what he’s pretty sure was once the Stark family babysitter has been ordered to monitor and record all of his reactions for further analysis. 

And today brings a new result: stealing all of Bruce's black BIC pens and hiding them in obscure places around the house – a house probably bigger than the ones all six of them grew up in (save Thor) put together -- will make the former physicist lose an afternoon of research time and destroy most of everyone's belongings in the recovery process. 

The search eventually takes him to Steve's room which, to his credit, is much tidier than any of the others. It's a utilitarian space consisting of a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookshelf, a couple easels and a framed antique Brooklyn Dodgers poster. Sheets tucked into hospital corners with military precision, a desk swept clean of any detritus, drawers full of his drawing pads, pencils, pastels and vine charcoal all neatly stacked together. The room is sparse and contained with just enough open spaces around it that Bruce doesn't even have to dig. He finds three of his pens in Cap's desk, four in his sock drawer and is in the process of checking the bookshelf when -- while pulling out a collection of John Singer Sargent -- he knocks a small square box to the floor.

He stares at it for a moment, stomach tightening as he notes the black velvet, the size and shape of the box. He feels the world shrink as he picks it up and opens the top, staring at the simple yellow gold band with the tiny diamond chip. So much so that he doesn't even hear Steve enter the room until he raps his knuckles along the door frame. 

"Oh, Cap, uh..."

"Pens?"

He'd told Steve. Of course, he had. "Yeah." 

Somewhere in the past ten months, Steve has joined the ranks of Pepper Potts and Colonel Rhodes as one of the few human beings Tony would actually confide in ('anything real' his brain supplies). More so after they began sleeping together, which according to Pepper Potts, was even more of an aberration. Intimacy has a way of making Tony share less with people, not more. 

Bruce understands that to an extent and tries not to let his mind wander to Betty. 

"What do you think?"

It takes Bruce a moment to realize that Steve's talking about the ring. 

“It’s, uh, very elegant. Understated.” Not so much like Tony, he thinks.

This would probably be easier if it were Tony he was talking to. Bruce is quite confident that his opinion matters to Steve on a professional level. On a personal level... that's less familiar territory. He considers the box in his hand and the blue eyes carefully watching him. 

"When were you planning on asking?" 

"He's been down in the workshop for days tinkering with the upgrades on the new suits. I was kind of waiting him out."

"I think days will probably just turn into weeks if you don't ask now."

Steve nods. “I haven’t told the others.”

“Don't you think you should tell *him* before you tell the others? We’ll all get it in the ear if he’s the last to know.”

Bruce won’t tell. He knows the others will go along anyway. As far as the Avengers are concerned, he and Tony have proven they can lead effectively and maintain… whatever their relationship exactly is ('committed' his brain supplies again, ever helpful). The only person who might have some word of caution or strenuous objection is Fury, and the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. is already on thin ice for refusing to give the Tower’s specs a pass, forcing everyone into the claustrophobic semi-luxury they’re all living in now (Tony’s lecture on the proximity of lab rats in small cages and increased breeding had been particularly riveting, considering he gave it to Fury on the front hallway stairs, pants-less and standing in front of a blushing and shirtless Steve). 

He shuts the box and flips it back to Steve, who catches it, one-handed and holds it below his sternum, about – if he were in uniform – where the top of the star would be.

“You won’t know until you ask, right?”

And Bruce would never have guessed before, but he already knows what Tony's answer will be.

\-- 

The whole house gets Tony's answer an hour later, when the pulsar technology he's been “tinkering” with blasts a hole through the ceiling. Natasha stares at Bruce from the other half of the charred and bisected sofa, her copy of _Pale Fire_ abandoned in her hands.

"Well then, uh..." he says, struggling to regain control of his spiked adrenaline, slowing his breathing to keep the big guy under wraps. Natasha breathes evenly once, twice, before returning her gaze to her book. Bruce reaches for a pillow to douse the remains of the still smoldering cushions on his side.


	2. Chapter 2

Pepper Potts isn’t the last person to find out (the enormous advertisement Tony takes out in the _New York Times_ makes sure of that). She is reasonably certain that she’s the first person Tony calls after he’s finished letting the press -- and the soaring company stock -- spread the happy news for him. 

“How are you doing, Pep? Is that a pang of regret I’m hearing in the back of your throat there?” Pepper has yet to say a word. Tony’s own voice is thick around the last few syllables. Her instinct as a CEO and the long-term cohort of an impulsive boy wonder is to point out the projection. The bottom of her stomach turning over won’t allow it. 

Still, Regret is for wusses and they both left it in the dust a long time ago. 

“More like relief,” she answers, swallowing. “And a bit of cheese danish. Can I help you with something? Apart from extending my fondest congratulations?”

She’s not really surprised when her former boyfriend and current boss begins to grill her for ideas on finding a venue and creating a guest list. She’s also not surprised that the man has slipped into the micro-managing he’s famous for.  


“Tony, shouldn’t you be talking with Steve about this stuff? It is his wedding you’re planning, too.”

"I asked. Steve says it's woman's work. Now what do you mean the Hilton is too ostentatious?”

She takes a moment to digest that. Counts to ten. Counts backwards from ten.

“Pepper? Pepper? I can hear you breathing. Pepper?"

“I mean it’s too big, too expensive and it will make everyone in the wedding that’s not you a bit uncomfortable. Steve did not say it was ‘woman’s work.’” She can’t even imagine what collection of words combined into an intelligible sentence that even Tony could decipher as ‘woman’s work.’

“Close enough.”

“I have a meeting in ten minutes. I draw the line at wedding planning, Tony.”

“It’s not wedding planning. It’s advice, which I've grown accustomed to needing from you. Desperately.”

“And my advice is to hire a wedding planner.”

“Fair enough," he says. Then, "Which one?”

\--

Clint misses Avengers Tower. Not the place – none of them ever actually got to live in the place S.H.I.E.L.D. declared a security risk before promptly relocating six errant superheroes to Howard Stark’s old playpen. He misses the idea of the place he’d had in the months leading up to the move – when he, Natasha and the rest of them had planned to set up house on any of the 93 floors Stark had at his disposal. Freedom to move, space that was his, lots of obscure vents, high shelves and ceiling drops for him to practice maneuvers in.  


He really misses it one afternoon when, while putting new heads on his arrows at the kitchen table, he hears the steely click and slide of a mechanism behind him and feels something loop around his waist. 

“Don’t. Don’t struggle. I promise this will all be over soon,” Stark says. It probably sounds reassuring in his head. There’s another click and a familiar whirring sound. When Clint looks down, he finally realizes the thing behind him is one of Stark’s robots and the thing around his waist is a tape measure. 

“What is he doing?” Clint asks, unable to keep the sharp edge out of the question.

“Measuring you for your cummerbund. I couldn’t get a good enough approximation based on photo analysis. Don't worry. This is just a preliminary. There'll be another fitting closer to the big day.”

“My bow is on the table, you do see that, right?”

Tony’s expression never changes. “Long range weapon. I’m only in danger if I run away.”

He’s about to tell Tony all the manner of ways he’s in danger if he doesn’t run away when the words sink in.

"Cummerbund. Wait! Am I *in* the wedding?"

"You're the best man."

"What?!" He wants to turn his head. He wants to grab his bow and turn his head, because some instincts never die and these answers are nowhere near specific enough for him. The robot holding the tape measure makes another whirring noise that seems more expressive than functional and he straightens up instead, feeling the tape measure slide free. 

"Steve's best man, to be precise. I already picked Pepper, who told me to pick someone else. 'Don’t know that you’d be his first choice but needs must. Also, his first choice has been dead for more than seventy years. Probably. Officially."

"Why don't you ask Bruce?" he asks, and then realizes he never considered Cap might have input into picking his own members of the wedding party. 

"What part of ‘Pepper told me to pick someone else,’ didn’t you hear? Rhodey couldn’t guarantee he’d be there no matter what date I threw at him – national security, executive orders, something or other – so Bruce it is. Of course he's got enough on his plate keeping the other guy in line and doesn't really need the added pressure of writing a toast or planning a bachelor party so I’m doing it all for him. It’s a very healthy, mutually beneficial arrangement."

And the pennies just keep falling. "You want me to plan Cap's bachelor party?"

“That is the best man’s job, isn’t it? Just keep it tasteful. You know how he is. We’ll come back and measure you for your shirt later. You like cobalt blue, right? Never mind. It doesn’t matter if you do or not. My wedding.”

Clint allows five minutes of cool down time to elapse before taking his bow and newly-armed arrows out into the courtyard for target practice. 

\--

Everyone has a job to do, in Tony’s mind. It’s like everyone on the team who helped build the first rocket, everyone who drew up the plans for the Hubble Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider. You draw up a plan, you write a budget, you raise the funds, you disseminate roles and obligations to several parties, those parties fulfill those obligations that contribute to the greater whole.

From a technical standpoint, a wedding's not all that different.

There is the strange thrill when Steve gives him the ring. The shock up his spine, his knees locking to keep him vertical, the feeling that his chest is going to explode, leaving the arc reactor embedded in the wall and Steve covered in his blood and tissue. There is the thrill when Steve asks him, followed by acceptance and reciprocation and the oddly grounding solidity as that ring is slipped onto his finger. Steve refuses to have sex with him in the lab (something about propriety and cleanliness and voyeuristic robots) and they quickly decamp upstairs instead, ignoring the smoldering crater he’s accidentally left in the middle of the living room floor. 

He doesn't get marriage proposals from gorgeous men everyday. A certain amount of property damage should be excused, particularly when it's his own property.

Anything Steve wants is there for the asking. Tony tells him so (between labored panting breaths and afterwards, when they’re in sated repose). And, like the good person he is, Steve wants very little. Nothing, in fact. 

"I don't know, to be honest. No really, I have no ideas because when I was growing up, it was up to the bride and her family to arrange the ceremony and I sort of... We were very poor and I was scrawny with nothing to offer any girl. Or boy. And I never thought I was going to be in the position of being able to ask anyone to marry me."

A year ago, he would have had a witty comment about the blank slate that was Steve Rogers’ mind. At the moment, he has nothing; nothing but an aching, scarred, semi-functional heart and unwitting but hard-won respect and a fierce determination. 

“I want you to have the wedding that you want,” Steve says finally, dropping a kiss onto Tony’s shoulder that quickly migrates up to the pulse point in his neck. “Pick anything you want. It’s fine with me.”

And, just like that, Tony knows exactly what his job is. His job is to be The Bride (because marriage is for everyone but archaic heteronormative stereotypes pervade) and by extension – since Howard and Maria aren't here to share the load (and isn't that just the most disturbing image in the world?) – the Bride’s family. And the little nuances of putting together a delicious and invigorating spectacle aren't so new or burdensome to him as they would be to Steve or, for that matter, anyone else in the house.

So he’s got his job to do. If nobody else knows theirs, well then it's also his job to tell them, isn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small bit of IM3 non-compliance: the presence of the arc reactor. Because several things in the last ten minutes of the movie irk me (minus the post-credits tag).


End file.
